Online shopping has been an increasing trend for those that do not have the time, desire or ability to access a real world store. For this reason, retailers have focused their attention on making increasingly interactive online shopping experiences for their customers.
With emerging technologies, such as three-dimensional internet (3Di) and virtual worlds, becoming popular, retailers are turning to these technologies to sell their products. Creating these three-dimensional (3D) web stores can become extremely time-consuming as well as costly. There are two areas that take up most of the time in designing such a store. These are designing the layout of the 3D web store and designing the product images that will be placed inside of it.
When creating a web store, retailers often approach a service providing company with expertise in the area. This company then designs the layout of the web store, deciding where to put the shelves, signs, displays, etc. This creative design of the web store can take time and effort that neither party can afford. The company may also design the product images to be used within the web store. These product images increasingly need to look identical to the actual product as it will sit in the web store and where it will sit. Currently, companies are turning to commercial artists to create the product images. They draw the packaging and add any additional artwork or words that are featured on the actual product. This can take a very long time as this process needs to be done for each product that will be featured in the web store. For this reason, it is necessary to find a more efficient means for creating a 3D web store and 3D images of products that will be featured within it.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,026,376 describes a system that uses encoded digital signals to represent images in the online store as they would be seen by a shopper in a real world store.
World Intellectual Property Organization Publication (WO) 2005/041099 describes a system that shows each product in an online store as a digital image. This invention lines up the digital images of each product in the sequence that they occur in the store.
However, there exists a need in the art to overcome the limitations of creating a virtual store and product images as described hereinabove. It is believed that such a capability would constitute a significant advancement in the art.